In Gotham City
by Nightcrawlerlover
Summary: Oneshot. Yami Yugi muses about the love of his life while sitting on a rooftop in Gotham City.


**Hey there. Here's a new Yu-Gi-Oh crossover I cooked up one day; this time it's a crossover with the 1989 Batman film. (I love doing crossovers between two fandoms I like. I don't know why, though; it feels kind of cool, as well as very neat, too.)**

**Disclaimer: Genius Bob Kane and the geniuses at Warner Bros own Batman and the 1989 film. Kazuki Takahashi (also a genius) owns Yu-Gi-Oh. I own the fanfics I cook up from time to time.**

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In Gotham City

**Yami Yugi's POV**

That day, she told me she loved me, but I've known for a long time.

She didn't have to say the words. Her eyes and her smiles were all it took to speak volumes to me, and although I hadn't had a body to call my own in some time, I was well able to receive and decipher those carefully hidden messages that hers send me; whether it was that particular sparkle in her eyes (eyes that I've felt I've been missing all of my … well, for lack of a better word, life as the spirit of the Millennium Puzzle), the tilt of her head, the way she bit her lower lip in my presence or the tender smile that none of their friends ever received except me – I understood. Yes, I understood perfectly.

But those hands, they hadn't been mine… they would never be.

I had anticipated her confession, dreamed of it when I knew no one was there to invade on my thoughts. Often I imagined what it would be like at that moment when her determination to come clean would conquer her girlish shyness. Would she take a deep breath and raise her eyes to mine only to lower them again shamefully? Would her voice ring timid from hesitation and nervousness, or would she manage to infuse it with false confidence and heartfelt infatuation?

I did not know, but I was looking forward to discovering these things, just as much as I was looking forward to her impending declaration of love; the anticipation and knowledge of which I jealously sought to hide from my partner when it hadn't even occurred. Yes, I knew that she loved me, I was sure about it and I wanted to hear the words falling from her lips for no one but me to treasure. I was dependent on the exclusivity of her revelation, because it was all I'd ever get, all I'd ever allow myself to have.

For those hands – those hands hadn't been mine…

I must confess, I had expected it a lot sooner; perhaps it was when she first noticed (and rightfully suspected) that I was not her gentle friend, Yugi, but someone else entirely, or perhaps on Kaiba's airship, shortly before I had to face whom I (all of us, actually) at that time had believed to be Marik Ishtar. It would have suited the occasion and I admit that I had wanted it to be over and done with – I was prepared to lose that duel although I knew that I mustn't. Too much had been at stake – not only my own welfare, but that of others, too. Hers, for instance. Yet the unwelcome thought of losing would have been much more agreeable if I had heard her say those words to me beforehand – despite the fact that as much as I wanted to hear her tell me, there was a part of me that dreaded the moment she would.

Because I wondered – would I be able to dutifully deny her what she so willingly offered? Would I be able to do what I deemed best when facing… her? Could I deny myself the pleasure of her love, where I longed for it just as much as I did for the knowledge of my identity?

What wouldn't I have given to hear those infamous three words from her, crowned by the gentle whispering of my name! And if I couldn't have mine, any name she'd see fit to bestow upon me would have been welcome and as dear to me as my own – any as long as it wouldn't be his, any as long as she decreed it mine and mine alone. But, oh, how the gods tortured me. I knew that what I desired could never be, just as I knew that denying both of us would cause a rift between us. I didn't want to tear that tender bond connecting us apart. I was scared.

But I knew I had no right to her because those hands, they hadn't been mine, no matter how much I wished for them to be.

And then she told me.

I was exhilarated and utterly devastated, all at the same time. How sweet was the feeling of triumph when all my wondering, all my doubt (yes, I had doubted – what would I have done had it not been I who had captured her heart but my partner?) evaporated into thin air, to prove what I had hoped. Never was she more beautiful to me than in that one moment when she opened her fragile heart to me and awaited my decision on what to do with all that she offered.

I had to reject her, as much as it pained me to do it, and I still wonder from where the words and the resolve to pull through came, because the moment the words had left her lips, I only wanted to touch mine to hers. Yet I didn't. I refused her, denied us both what we yearned for.

Because those hands hadn't been mine and I wasn't sure whether I would be able of making her understand just how much that meant to me.

I feel safe admitting now, as I sit here on the rooftop in Gotham City, that I had loved her. No, that doesn't ring right. I love her, even now, as I sit writing these words on a pad of paper, and I know that I cheated both of us, her and me, out of creating something that would have been truly divine, magnificent, pure and important.

Yet what had to be done is done and I couldn't have told her that I reciprocated her feelings, anyway, so why bother? Had it not been best for all of us to avoid unnecessary suffering that had been sure to follow if I had told her how I had truly felt?

Thus, no matter how badly I wanted to, I couldn't have told her that whenever she left my sight (when it was my sight) I had to fight the urge to tear after her and bask in the glory that was she. I couldn't have told her that the sway of her hips drove me mad with want; her soft, melodious voice was an impossible opponent to battle during the long hours of night, when it would keep me awake while the body offering me habitation yearned for her touch as badly as the burning desert sands yearned for the rain to fall. I couldn't have told her how deeply I cared, but…

But if I would have had a heart to give, a living, beating heart all of my own, I would have given it to her. If I would have had lips to kiss, I would have touched them to hers to taste the sweetness of her mouth. If I would have had arms and hands of my own, I would have embraced her as to never let her go again, would have reveled in letting my hands roam her curvaceous body without regretting a single moment of it.

Alas, those hands I had used, those hands which had itched with my desire to touch her, had not been mine and I could not, would not allow another to touch what I wanted for myself, even if that other was the boy who shared his body with me. I'd rather not touch her at all than having to touch her with his hands, even if it meant that I would never get to know the texture of her skin (whereas he might perhaps), rather not kiss her and never know the taste of her lips if it meant that he wouldn't know it, either.

My body is nothing but that – a well-conserved corpse. What could I have given her with a body that is dead, a heart that no longer beats and a spirit that knew that, upon completion of its task, it would cease to exist in her world?

That world – the world they call America – it hadn't been my own. I was nothing but a stranger there, stranded in time.

Those hands, they hadn't been mine; they were not those of the man I once was.

But if her world would have been my own, if his hands would have been mine, I would have taken her into my arms the moment she told me how she felt. I would have showered her face with kisses, would have linked her heart to mine with sweet words of love that would have been both, exaggerated and true. I would have made her mine in every way possible, would have consumed her with my fire as hungrily as she would have consumed me with hers, and reveled in the knowledge, that her soul would have been mine to cherish for the rest of my life, maybe perhaps even beyond death.

I will never know, however, because no matter how much the thought torments me, these hands capable of touching her, although similar, are not mine, have never been and shall never be.

So, I sit on this rooftop, brooding. And, as I now have my own body, instead of going into the afterlife, I stay here in this world. There's so much to learn and remember, as well as so many things that these mortals can dream up and create. Ah, how they intrigue me so.

Well, I have to go now. I sense, with my Millennium powers, that the villains – those rogues – are calling to me. I wonder what they want **now**...


End file.
